Changing gradient colors in PS

[Frog]

I have someone who wanted just a handful of shirts that I thought I could do with transfers, but, not only is my color output far less than accurate, these folks even want this output in a different color than it is in now. It's just one color lightish blue,with a fade, and they want it changed to a Pantone specific. If it matters, it's a high rez png

In Photoshop, I have changed colors with the fill command, but in this instance, the fade becomes solid. So, even though I'm probably sending them to the local franchise with a DTG, inquiring minds still want to know how to deal with fades and other halftoned shapes that now want to fill in solid.

[mimosatexas]

I would probably end up doing either some kind of double layer with hue adjustments and play with the layer lighting options, or create a solid layer of what is a gradient and apply a gradient myself where I had full control over the colors and the style of the fade.

edit: if it is a complex shape and already halftoned, you will likely have to redraw it in some way.  I don't know of any way to quickly unhalftone something...

[Frog]

Yeah, if I were screen printing it, I make the plate as a new spot color sep channel with color range, but, I was hoping that there is a handy dandy action to make that a chosen color for digital output.

[mimosatexas]

Well for digital printing you just need to know which color profile they are using (cmyk, rgb, etc) and then match the pantone with it's approximate value in that profile.  Whoever is printing it should be able to help with specific quirks for their printer and profile.

[Dottonedan]

Sounds like you want to edit a specific area/color inside a flat or merged layer of art that has all the other colors on the same layer, correct? So you want to know how to isolate that area or is the color all over the place?  Like you always say, a pic to review would help.

If in a specific area, I do a few things. First, look at each channel of the RGB or cmyk by itself and see if you can make good or easy isolated selections (of just those areas). Then copy, paste to a new channel and use that as a selection mask.

You want to bring it into a channel because your original is a flat/merged layer. Selecting a color there, also creeps into the background color selecting shades you don't want to capture. Using channels is excellent for this. Once done in channels, hold control and click on the channel name area. This selects every shade/tone/% of a gradation in the channels with no background.  Keep it selected and move back into layers.

Then go to layers and create a new layer and fill that with your specific Pantone color.  Now create another new layer and fill that with solid white. Move your colored art up above the white background.

Depending on how easy or well you did with the selection, you may want to fade out some.

There are many many different methods to do the same job by I like the isolated selections to control where I want to adjust.

[Frog]

Here you go. Here's a smaller jpg of it.
And as I said, the goal is merely to make it a different color. That shouldn't be so tough for you guys who know what you're doing.
Not like me, LOL!

At this point, the goal is just to learn the process as I already sent them to my competition down the street.

[Dottonedan]

https://youtu.be/MLsmwPD2MjI

[Frog]

See? easy when you know how! Dan's the man!